“Cruel Comfort”: A Reading of the Theological Critique in Sense and Sensibility

Kathleen James-Cavan

Kathleen James-Cavan (email: kathleen.james-cavan@usask.ca)
is Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of
Saskatchewan and M.Div. candidate at St. Andrew’s College,
Saskatoon. She edited Sense and Sensibility
for Broadview Press and William Hay’s Deformity:
An Essay for English Literary Studies. She publishes on Austen and on
disability culture in eighteenth-century British literature.

On
October 10, 1808, a fortnight after the birth of her eleventh child, Elizabeth Austen, the wife of Jane
Austen’s brother Edward, died very suddenly. In a letter
to Cassandra, who was staying with the family in Godmersham, Jane
wrote from Southampton of having informed their cousin the Rev.
Edward Cooper, then rector of Hamstall Ridware, Staffordshire, and
friend to the Clapham sect: “I have written to Edwd
Cooper, & hope he will not send one of his Letters of cruel
comfort to my poor Brother” (15-16 October 1808).
Although the letter to which Austen refers is unavailable, Cooper’s
theology of comfort may be discernible in his sermon “The Holy
Spirit The Comforter.” Translated from the Vulgate, “The
Comforter” is the title by which the third person of the
Trinity was popularly known in the eighteenth century (“Comforter”).
Taking as his text the Gospel of John 14:16, “And I will pray
the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may
abide with you for ever” (King James Version), Cooper compares
the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, to a “skilful physician”
who in the first step “to convince a man of his sins”
destroys “all his former grounds of comfort” (21).
These worldly “false grounds of comfort” include domestic
comforts such as prosperity and the admiration of friends as well as
the comfort of believing one’s good works commend one to God
(Cooper 19, 21).

The
concept of the spiritual work of comfort was still with Austen a
scant year later when, comfortably settled at Chawton, she was
revising her epistolary novel “Elinor and Marianne” into
what would become her first published novel.
Words derived from comfort—comfortable,
uncomfortable,
comfortably—are
found one hundred four times in Sense
and Sensibility,
the highest frequency of these words in all of Austen’s mature
works.1
From the late Latin confortare
meaning “to strengthen much” (“Comfort”),
comfort in Sense and Sensibility
is a contingent, not absolute, value that operates as a currency in
the plot to expose and keep ironies at play. Linked through
Marianne’s resurrectional narrative, the theological concept of
comfort also appears in Sense and Sensibility
as a cruel compromise threading through the text’s volatile
ethos of “unresolved conflicts” to unsettle its closure
(Copeland lx).

While the questions of the relation between Austen’s novels and
politics, feminism, and the development of the genre have attracted
much attention from literary critics, the novels’ critical
engagement with theological questions has been comparatively
neglected.2
In the past twenty-five years commentary has begun to elucidate the
religious background often missed or mistaken by readers in a secular
age. Gene Koppel argues that being aware of this dimension in
Austen’s work “intensifies our appreciation of the
interlinked moral and psychological dimensions of the novels, and of
the irony which pervades all of her fiction” (24-25). In
tracing the representations of the clergy in the novels, Irene
Collins maintains that Austen was a “deeply religious woman”
and that the morality in the novels is nothing more than “an
essential part of Christianity” (182). Michael Giffin and
William Jarvis, both Anglican priests, reconstruct the Georgian
context of the mainstream Anglican theology evident in the novels and
letters. While Jarvis argues that before Mansfield Park
and Persuasion “there is no truly religious theme” (75), Giffin asserts
“she is an Anglican author who writes Christian stories”
(Jane Austen 27) and devotes to each completed novel a chapter detailing its
connection to Austen’s overall theme of salvation.
Marilyn Butler, by contrast, observes that the last three novels “are
profounder than the first three not because they express an inward
religious intensity but because they are caught up in a national mood
of self-assessment and regeneration” (“History” 207).

Not only prevailing religious questions but also constant exposure to the
Anglican liturgy, argues Laura Mooneyham White, shaped how Austen
“thought and the words she used” (37). As evidence for Austen’s
personal religious convictions and practice, readers such as Bruce
Stovel, Elton E. Smith , and Laura Dabundo examine the set of three
prayers attributed to Austen first published in 1940 (Todd and Bree
cxix). Janet Todd and Linda Bree argue persuasively that the
prayers cannot be proven to be Austen’s composition;3
however, no matter the authorship of the prayers they offer an
important glimpse into the spiritual life of the family to which
Austen belonged, who was, after all, the first audience for her
fiction. Emerging from that environment, Austen’s writing
reveals more than an unmediated reproduction of conventional piety.
Sense and Sensibility contains a significant challenge to the role of established religion
as “Comforter” (Blair 1.58).

The granddaughter, daughter, sister, and cousin of Church of England
clergymen, Jane Austen was no evangelical; rather, her religious
views occupied the “safe middle course between Enlightenment
rationalism, with its attendant dangers of agnosticism and
secularization, and Evangelical ‘enthusiasm,’
characterized by intense personal piety” (Wheeler 406).
But a centrist religious practice does not indicate a lack of
seriousness, for religious belief in Austen’s time was a
fundamental part of identity.4
Described by William Warburton as a “coactive Power” with
the state especially useful to the “Reformation of Manners”
(80), the Church of England maintained its status as state church
throughout the 1790s and the Regency period. Against the
background of the political turmoil in and subsequent wars with
France, figures such as Edmund Burke argued that the intimate
connection between church and state provided support for the monarchy
and assured peace in Great Britain (Yates 26). Nevertheless, in
this same period during which Austen was drafting Northanger Abbey,
Sense and Sensibility, and Pride and Prejudice
“the full theological and personal implications of modern
evangelicalism emerged into popular religiosity and popular culture”
(Brown 36).

Like most of her class compatriots, Austen attended church regularly
(Jacob 201-02), and references in her letters and novels to such
matters as evangelicalism and ordination reveal her awareness of the
religious currents and controversies of her day.
Her fiction also reflects the high visibility of the clergy in the
late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Penelope
Corfield estimates that in 1801 the clergy of all denominations in
England and Wales numbered approximately 13,500 in a population of
ten million, a ratio of one clergy to every 740 non-clergy people
(110). Despite close connections to the clergy and active
participation in worship, however, Austen did not leave a record of
her spiritual life or openly discuss contemporary theological issues,
such as the nature of the trinity or sanctification.5
Indeed, the words “spiritual” and “spirituality,”
in relation to religion, do not feature in any of her fictional works
or letters; she refers to “serious” matters, meaning
those connected with religious belief, and uses the terms “religious”
and “religion,” but these appear infrequently.

It would appear, then, that this woman of the church has little or
nothing to say in her writings about deeper matters such as faith,
theology, or Christology.
While characters such as Emma Woodhouse, Fanny Price, and Anne Elliot
attend worship, they do not discuss the homily or sermon. Even
Elizabeth Bennet and Marianne Dashwood, who undergo profound
spiritual reversals, do not reflect extensively on their experiences
in deeply spiritual terms.6
Nevertheless the novels manifest an abiding concern for how religion
affects the conduct of life. As early a reader as Richard
Whately, later Archbishop of Dublin, reviewing Northanger
Abbey and Persuasion for the Quarterly Review
in January 1821 observes, Austen is “evidently a Christian
writer” in whose works religion “is rather alluded to
. . . than studiously brought forward or dwelt upon”
(359). Sense and Sensibility
contains little explicit religious content; however, through its
narrative structure of death and resurrection and its repeated
references to a discourse of comfort and the ambiguous role of the
comforter, it opens the reader to a critical appraisal of notions of
comfort, both religious and secular, that do not take seriously the
pain of loss.

While both Ferrars brothers experience comic annihilation followed by
restoration (although birth order is never put to rights), Marianne
Dashwood’s descent and return is the most controversial.7
Just as Christians find comfort in the resurrection, so readerly
comfort in Sense and Sensibility rests,
at least in part, on understanding the nature of Marianne’s
“extraordinary fate” (429) in her marriage to Colonel
Brandon. Has she been re-educated into an “automaton”
(Tanner 144) and “disciplined into a domestic subject”
(Stewart 78) to be the “reward” for Brandon’s
“sufferings,” “constancy” (SS 379),
and “sorrows” (429)? And is their marriage the
necessary punishment for Willoughby (376)? Or, does a
regenerated Marianne “voluntarily . . . give her
hand” to Brandon animated by “no sentiment superior to
strong esteem and lively friendship” (429)?

In addition to the ambiguous motivations for her marriage, her
preparation for it—a near death experience—is presented
as a parody. A serious novel of sensibility would kill off such a character.
Marianne has, after all, committed the capital crime of throwing
herself at the man in London who made love to her in Devonshire.
An astute contemporary reader of sentimental parodies, however, would
have learned by 1811 to expect her illness to turn out
anticlimactically (Moler 64, 66). The text gives both a comic
and serious turn to this event by setting the illness and recovery at
“about the end of March,” just before Easter.
Emphasizing both the significance and ambiguity of this turn in the
plot, Marianne’s serious decline is described as beginning “On
the morning of the third day” (SS 350).

Conflating the narrative accounts of the resurrection and the words of both the
Apostles’ Creed and the Creed of St. Athanasius that Christ
“rose again the third day from the dead” (Church),8
such a phrase during the Easter holidays indicates more than a marker
in time; it carries the weight of all the passages in the New
Testament in which Christ prophesies his resurrection.9
Reversing the biblical text, Marianne becomes dangerously ill,
whereas Christ rises, on “the third day.”
Nevertheless, Marianne’s descent and return mimics that of the
redemptive male hero by both fulfilling and defying the sentimental
narrative with which she has been consistently identified. But
is there comfort to her return to health? How is the reader to
respond to her resurrection? To answer this question, I turn to
the matrix of the concept of comfort which underpins the novel.

In his sermon “On Devotion,” Hugh Blair portrays a devout
man counting his blessings:
“He reviews the events of his life; and in every comfort which
has sweetened it, he discerns the Divine hand” (1:270).
In Sense and Sensibility the
theme of comfort provides a moral thermometer with comfort itself
emerging as a commodity that defines characters’ interactions.
Those who give most comfort, such as Elinor and Colonel Brandon, earn
reputations for virtue; those who take it from others, such as
Marianne and Willoughby, earn obligations. But juxtaposed to
this enticingly naïve measuring stick is the early example of
the efforts of John and Fanny Dashwood to determine how to make Mrs.
Dashwood and her daughters “comfortable,” in accordance
with John’s promise to his father.

From his original intent to “increase the fortunes of his sisters by
the present of a thousand pounds a-piece” (6)—which
Edward Copeland points out is only a third of what they “might
reasonably have expected” (n9 436-37)—John and Fanny
eventually determine that the Dashwood women will be “‘excessively
comfortable’” on an income of “‘five
hundred-a-year amongst them’” (13-14). Enjoying a
merely “‘comfortable’” income of between
£5,000 and £10,000 per annum (n16 438; 255), the John
Dashwoods’ rationalizations about what they “‘can
afford to do’” (11) recalls the “false Comfort”
that Sherlock identifies with those who “excuse their Sins by
laying all the blame on their own natural Infirmities and the Want of
God’s Grace to enable them to do well” (2:93). The
threat represented by their hypocrisy and selfishness becomes comic
only when Sir John Middleton’s “well timed” letter
arrives (26) with its offer of Barton Cottage—the very
situation that answers Mrs. Dashwood’s “notions of
comfort and ease” (16)—to rescue the Dashwood women.

But Colonel Brandon’s story of the first Eliza provides a cruel
parallel showing the consequences of wealthy family members imposing
definitions of comfort on their dispossessed relations.
In spite of entering her marriage with a sizable fortune, Eliza
Brandon is left with a “‘legal allowance’”
after divorce that is not “‘sufficient for her
comfortable maintenance’” and leads her to the “‘spunging
house’” where she dies (235). Colonel Brandon’s
only means of making himself comfortable when he discovers her
distress is to give her “‘time for a better preparation
for death’” (235), an action of comforting the weak that
Jarvis identifies with the teaching of the Book of Common Prayer
(57) and that Sherlock states is the duty of the believer (3:80).
No doubt Colonel Brandon’s ministrations also enable Eliza to
receive the sacrament of Extreme Unction, as provided in the BCP.
Although Sherlock argues that making provision for the comfort of
others is both “a Godlike Virtue” and a source of comfort
to the wealthy (5:202), Sense and Sensibility presents
a serious critique of the abuse of such “Godlike” power
in the portraits of the John Dashwoods and Colonel Brandon’s
father and brother.

Physical comfort, particularly in the domestic space, provides the foundation
for emotional or spiritual comfort but what constitutes domestic
comfort is highly unstable, particularly in the novel’s first
volume. The elderly Mr. Dashwood or “the old Gentleman” of
Norland Park, enjoys “every degree of solid comfort” in
the company of his niece and nephew, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Dashwood, and
their children (3). But comfort for the younger generations lasts
only as long as the old Gentleman’s life since their place at
Norland is dependent upon a will that reproduces the system of strict
settlement10
and provides very little for the comfort of female relatives.

The Dashwoods’ next residence, Barton Cottage, “though small,
[is] comfortable and compact” (33); it is also disadvantaged by
“‘dark narrow stairs, and a kitchen that smokes’”
(85). But for Willoughby, performing the role of man-of-sensibility, its
small parlor contains “‘more real accommodation and
comfort than any other apartment of the handsomest dimensions in the
world’” (86). Also described as “‘comfortable,’”
however, is the much larger “‘pretty sitting room up
stairs’” at Allenham, which Marianne argues needs only
modern furniture to make it a pleasant summer-room; with windows on
two sides commanding views of the village and bowling green,
respectively, its comforts are of a quite different order than those
of Barton Cottage (81). Marianne’s notions of comfort are
as contingent as her definition of financial competence.

Similarly, Robert Ferrars, who has never had to live in one, descants to Elinor
on the elegance and comfort of a cottage (286).
On the other hand, Mr. Palmer is irritated that the much grander
Barton Park lacks comfort because Sir John is too stupid to have a
billiard room (128). This pattern of varying, solipsistic
definitions of comfort would be only amusing but for Edward Ferrars’s
repeated desire for “domestic comfort and the quiet of private
life” (18) as a country parson. For Edward his vocation
is not so much a call to service as a retreat from distinction (105)
into a domestic comfort that the novel defines so amorphously.
Perhaps this negative expression of a sense of call is one reason
John Henry Newman comments in relation to Emma
that all of Austen’s parsons are “vile creatures”
since “she has not a dream of the high Catholic ethos”
(qtd in Littlewood 425). If a legitimate call to religious
service can be characterized merely as a desire for a quiet domestic
comfort, and that nearly unquantifiable, then the novel poses serious
questions about the motivations of the Anglican clergy.

Spacious rooms and smoke-free kitchens aside, domestic comfort relies upon
good governance.
Blair argues that “the chief comfort of our present life”
is that “we find ourselves in a regular and orderly world,”
assured by the “unchanging tenour of Divine government”
(Blair 2:107, 113). Ironically the best example of such
reliable human governance appears in the somewhat vulgar Mrs.
Jennings’s unflagging efforts to comfort Marianne throughout
her distress in London. But comfort and cruelty meet when, sure
of “bringing comfort” and doing Marianne good (229), Mrs.
Jennings hands her a letter from her mother when Marianne expects a
letter of contrition from Willoughby. Marianne is silenced
simply by the direction: “[t]he cruelty of Mrs. Jennings
no language, within her reach in her moments of happiest eloquence,
could have expressed” (230).

In contrast, Mrs. Ferrars’s
domestic management exemplifies the capriciousness that creates
unease. Edward excuses his ill-conceived engagement to Lucy
Steele as the consequence of his mother not making his home “‘in
every respect comfortable,’” whereas he felt “‘at
home, and . . . sure of a welcome” at Longstaple
(411). Her changeability emerges as comic cruelty when she
causes her family to be “exceedingly fluctuating” by
annihilating her sons and then restoring them unevenly (423).
The novel closes in some discomfort with the acknowledgement that
Robert attains the status of preferred son for marrying Lucy, whose
secret engagement to Edward initially caused the latter’s
demise in Mrs. Ferrars’s eyes (428).

But making the domestic space comfortable is also a cruel task.
When Elinor finally tells Marianne that for four months she has kept
secret her knowledge of Edward’s engagement, Elinor becomes
“the comforter of others in her own distresses” (296).
Marianne, whose responses are never particularly measured, responds
alarmingly: “‘you have made me hate myself for
ever’” (299). Those who bring comfort, therefore,
also create burdens for the recipient. Elinor discovers this
for herself when she has the distinctly uncomfortable pleasure of
communicating to Edward the details of the Delaford living, which,
although according to Colonel Brandon not sufficient to enable him to
marry, is to provide the basis for his future with Lucy (328-29).
Unconvincingly motivated, the excessive cruelty of Elinor’s
commission is a test not only of Elinor’s fortitude but also of
the reader’s confidence in a narrative that seems bent on
torturing its heroine. This time Elinor goes beyond comforting
another in her own distress; she is made to collaborate in making it
much worse. The office of comforter, therefore, holds few
comforts.

Two set pieces that may exhibit the remnants of the novel’s
epistolary origins exemplify the cruelty of comfort in final losses.
When Colonel Brandon recites to Elinor his tale of lost love, his
intention, he says, “‘is to be a means of giving
comfort;—no, I must not say comfort—not present
comfort—but conviction, lasting conviction’” to
Marianne (231-32). The only information relevant to Marianne’s
situation is the exposure of Willoughby’s transgression with
Eliza Williams; nevertheless, Colonel Brandon begins with her
mother’s story, a highly sentimental narrative complete with a
death scene in a debtor’s prison. Colonel Brandon asserts
that having discovered “‘the remains of the lovely,
blooming, healthful girl, on whom [he] had once doated,’”
his “‘greatest comfort’” was that he found
her “‘in the last stage of a consumption’” (235).

Similarly, in his interview with Elinor during the first few hours of Marianne’s
recuperation, Willoughby asserts that throughout his arduous ride
from London, “‘when I thought of her to-day as really
dying, it was a kind of comfort to me to imagine that I knew exactly
how she would appear to those,
who saw her last in this world’”: “‘white
as death’” (371). It is a shockingly selfish
admission even for Willoughby that his constant companion and source
of comfort has been the memory of Marianne’s physical collapse
following his brutal, public dismissal of her love. At that
moment she looks “dreadfully white” and is “unable
to stand” (202); indeed, the moment marks the beginning of her
decline into despair that nearly ends in her death. Comfort,
here, is associated ironically with the look of death, and so we come
around again to Edward Cooper’s theology of the work of the
Holy Spirit as Comforter in removing worldly comforts to focus the
soul on the lasting comfort of the resurrection. But by this
time, the notion of comfort has been thoroughly unsettled.

“Comfort” in Sense and Sensibility derives not from a mollifying of hardships
but from their sharpening into tools that strengthen much, as the word’s etymology suggests.
“[T]olerable comfort,” the state to which the Dashwood women aspire following their
expulsion from Norland (48), implies, at the very least, putting up with such inconveniences
as a smoky kitchen or a husband twice one’s age who wears flannel waistcoats.
Building on the famous second chapter in volume one, in which John and Fanny Dashwood all but redefine
“comfort” as its opposite, the repeated references to comfort throughout the
rest of the novel serve to strengthen the novel’s ambiguities and creative tensions.

Whereas hope is the “universal comforter” according to Blair
(1:49),
the most significant tangible hope for Elinor, the ring on Edward’s
finger containing a lock of what she believes to be her hair, turns
out to be the cruelest “comfort” to Lucy (155).
Initially perceived as a symbol of Edward’s attachment, it
becomes instead the means by which Elinor frees herself from illusory
hope and discovers true comfort in clear vision. When Marianne
emerges from her encounter with near self-destruction, she is
strengthened similarly by experience. If fear makes the
Christian set “to work for the Thing [he or she] . . .
is afraid to lose,” says Sherlock, then fear is a comfort which
enables the Christian to do all things through Christ (2:53).
Thus taking issue with Edward Cooper’s Holy Spirit, the
Comforter who scourges human beings of their worldly attachments, the
novel contains, in both senses of the word, a critique of such cruel
comfort, proposing in its place a Comforter who is a creative rather
than destructive thorn in the flesh (2 Cor 12:7). While
Austen’s novels and other writings have earned attention for
their depictions of delightfully bumptious clergy, they have yet to
be fully explored for their insights into the mainstream theology in
which Austen and many of her readers were steeped. Under cover
of laughter readers may hear the sound of passionate inquiry.

Notes

1.
De Rose’s Concordance lists a total of 579 occurrences of words derived from the stem “comfort”
in the six-volume Chapman edition. With 104 such uses Sense and Sensibility
accounts for 17.9% of their appearance in Austen’s work.
By contrast at a word count of 102,734, the novel comprises 9.6% of
Austen’s total words published in the Chapman edition. No
other work of fiction by Austen contains as many or as frequent
appearances of “comfort” words.

3.
See Todd and Bree’s “Introduction” to The
Later Manuscripts (cxviii-cxxv); see also “Protecting Jane.”

4.
Social historians such as W.M. Jacob, Nigel Yates, and Callum G. Brown as
well as literary critics Laura Mooneyham White, Gary Kelly, Michael
Giffin, Michael Wheeler, William Jarvis, Irene Collins, Gene Koppel,
Lesley Willis, Bruce Stovel, Marilyn Butler, and Colin Jager agree
that for the British gentry and middle classes in the late eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries Christian observance and belief was a
social norm. Contemporary sources, however, such as Austen’s
favorite sermon-writers, Thomas Sherlock (1678-1761), the Bishop of
London, and the Presbyterian Hugh Blair (1718-1800), frequently
address “unbelievers” as an identifiable, social
phenomenon. See, for instance, Blair’s “Sermon on
the Union of Piety and Morality” or Sherlock’s “Discourse
I: John 6:67-69” and passim.

5.
For a summary of the theological debates of the mid- to late-eighteenth
centuries, see Nigel Yates’s chapter, “The Maintenance of
Doctrinal Authority” (70-103). See also the articles by
Peter Nockles and Martin Fitzpatrick in Walsh.

6.
In one of the most explicit religious references of the Austen oeuvre
Marianne wonders, after her illness at Cleveland, “‘that
the very eagerness of my desire to live, to have time for atonement
to my God, and to you all, did not kill me at once’”
(391).

7.
Most critics acknowledge that Marianne attracts sympathy as she takes on
much of the novel’s criticism of the culture of sensibility.
For Marvin Mudrick, she is a passionate character “which Jane
Austen . . . ultimately exorcises altogether” (113).
Marilyn Butler and Angela Leighton agree that Marianne fades into
social irrelevancy (Butler, War 184; Leighton 140). Claudia Johnson sees her as submitting
“without resistance to those [codes] which dictate desolation
and very nearly death as the price of feeling” (50).
Deborah Kaplan argues that Marianne’s sensibility is a
“self-pre-occupied version of authority,” which is to be
avoided (537). Alistair Duckworth’s opinion is that while
the novel endorses Elinor’s “sense,” it
nevertheless admits the necessity of emotion and makes Marianne much
more attractive than her sister (113-14). This pattern, says
Douglas Bush, “demands a more complete subordination of
sensibility to sense than . . . [Austen’s] own
sympathies . . . can altogether support” (83).
In the wake of cinematic versions of the novel, Elinor’s
virtues have risen more recently in critics’ estimations; see,
for example, Mangiavellano, Tate, and Stohr.

8.
On Feast Days such as Easter Day, the Anglican Church says the Creed of
St. Athanasius. The Apostles’ Creed is used for morning
and evening prayers and in regular Sunday worship. The only
other critic I’ve encountered who notices this echo, Janine
Barchas, in her article on the novel’s allusions to the
Hell-Fire club of West Wycombe suggests the phrase may parody of the
group’s “mock-Catholic ceremonies” (27). In
my view, the Anglican use, so familiar to Austen, is a more likely source.

10.
Strict settlement was designed to protect estates from bankruptcy by naming
male successors as tenants for life and tenants in tail, and
restricting their rights to sell or alter the land. For a
thorough explanation of strict settlement see Spring.

Works Cited

Austen, Jane.
Letters.
Ed. Deirdre LeFaye. 3rd ed. Oxford: OUP, 1997.

_____.
Sense and Sensibility.
Ed. Edward Copeland. The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jane Austen.
Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006.

Barchas, Janine.
“Hell-Fire Jane: Austen and the Dashwoods of West Wycombe.”
Eighteenth-Century Life 33 (2009): 1-36.

Blair, Hugh.
Sermons, by Hugh Blair, D.D. One of the Ministers of the High Church, and
Professor of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres in the University, of Edinburgh.
2 vols. London, 1786.

Church of England.
The Book of Common Prayer, and Administration of the Sacraments, and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church,
According to the Use of the Church of England: Together with the Psalter or Psalms of David,
Pointed as They are to be Sung or Said in Churches.
Manchester, 1799.

Collins, Irene.
Jane Austen and the Clergy.
London: Hambledon, 1994.

“Comfort.”
The Oxford English Dictionary.
2nd ed. Web. 10 Aug. 2011.

“Comforter.”
Johnson, Samuel. A Dictionary of the English Language: in which the Words are Deduced
from Their Originals, and Illustrated in Their Different Significations by Examples from the Best Writers.
By Samuel Johnson, A.M.
Vol. 1. 2nd ed. London, 1755-56.